Dealing with overpayments, optimising sites for AI and more, notes from 22nd April 2026
Posted by Paul Silver
On the 22nd April, eleven freelancers met in the Battle of Trafalgar pub in Brighton to talk tech, handling clients, and a fair amount of random stuff. This is some of what we talked about:
- Chasing payments
- What to do when you’re overpaid by a client
- Codeberg as a European Github alternative
- Burning Claude tokens big time
- Optimising sites for AI
- Lowering work stress levels and taking more breaks
- Techniques for getting better results from Claude code
- The strange mistakes that AI coding tools make
- NextJS and server side rendering
- Mutual potential projects
- Re-wilding, incl. beavers being released in East Sussex
- Being jealous of travel vloggers
- Star Wars 8K fan edition
- D&D games over a long time
- The economics of D&D publishing
- Coworking at David Lloyd in the Marina
- Enjoyable VR games closing down
- VR games being set up by non-Meta systems
Thanks to Haze for filling in some notes from conversations I missed.
What to do when a client overpays you
If you notice before them – tell them!
If they notice before you – double check that it has happened and how much the overpayment is.
In either case, work out with them what they want to do.
If it’s a small amount and you’re regularly working for them, they may decide it’s easiest for you to keep it and take it off their next invoice.
If it’s a large amount, they could well want it back as soon as possible. When you’re paying them back, keep them informed. I once received a payment due to a different company from one of my clients and when I tried to pay them back, my bank insisted on the process had to wait a few hours after I put in their details as I’d never transferred them money before, this is an anti-fraud measure. Because of the time of day, that took us into the evening. I told the client that this was happening and I’d transfer the money in the morning, so they knew I’d tried but the banks processes were causing a delay.
They had to wait a bit, which probably didn’t help their accounts person’s stress level, but I was busy that evening and I took the view that I was still transferring the money back as soon as I could. I let them know in the morning after I’d made the transfer so they knew when to start checking for it so they could finalise sorting out their mistake their end.
When receiving money this way, mark it down as a mistaken payment in your accounts so your accountant (or future you) knows what to do with it when they’re preparing your end of year accounts.
Times this has happened
I’ve only had this happen 4-5 times in the 23 years I’ve been freelancing.
Mostly it was a mistake on whether an invoice had been paid or not, so it got paid a second time. Usually, they’ve wanted me to keep the money and take it off my next invoice, but for one of them I needed to pay it back.
Once it was the client picking the wrong company on their list of suppliers and sending my company a lump of money that should have gone to someone else. It was a big enough amount to be a surprise to me and a very stressful day for one of their accounts staff.
Temptation
You might be tempted to keep the money. Don’t, and definitely don’t spend the money. People make mistakes and that money is not yours. The mistake will get discovered at some point, and you will owe that money back. Telling them as soon as you see their mistake is a great way to show you’re a professional and enhance your relationship with your client. That’s worth a lot more in the long run than thinking you can spend that money and they’re not going to want it back.
If the client usually takes a while to pay you, you might be tempted to delay in paying the money back. Ask yourself this – what are you gaining from doing that? Maybe a bit of petty satisfaction, which can feel fair enough sometimes. Looking at the bigger picture, does it help you to be awkward with them, given you are going to have to pay the money back at some point? Or will you be better off being the bigger person and sending the money back as soon as you can? I’m not saying inconvenience yourself to do it, especially if they are generally awkward, I’m just saying don’t artificially cause problems that don’t need to happen.
Be understanding
Take this as a chance to bond with your client. We all make mistakes. Being the sort of person who helps someone sort out their mistake easily and smoothly makes you the sort of person they like dealing with. When we mess up, we want people to be understanding, this is just that for someone else, but it’s more stressful as there’s money involved. Make their lives easier.